“With the long distance wire ever handy. He may have time, but not for a long, sentimental sickness. I don’t see it fitting in.”
“No,” said Clement reflectively. “A long illness seems barred—but, look at the effect of this sudden news of Gunning’s dangerous illness on a nature like Miss Reys. It’ll bowl her over. Coming at the end of all these lost trails and excitements, and the end of all the emotions she’s been bottling up for months, this sudden, dramatic threat at the last moment will emotionally sweep her right off her feet.”
“She’ll be crazy with anxiety—I see,” said Gatineau. “She’ll be right off her guard, not noticing anything but how he is to be looked after, that’s it. It’s a sweet move on that rotten rogue’s part.”
“Also,” said Clement, grimly, “Henry will look better in bed—more presentable. He’s been on the loose, and it probably shows. But what would look disgusting in a man standing on his feet, will only look like the ravages of illness in a man lying and moaning on a sick bed.”
“The pathetic stop,” said Gatineau.
“The pathetic stop,” agreed Clement. “And they’ll play it for all they’re worth to the undoing of that girl.”
In a very short time Clement Seadon and Gatineau were rowing up the lake towards Gunning’s shack. To their friends they would have been quite unrecognizable. Cager, the alert, had provided them with floppy hats and clothes and fishing tackle. To the world at large they were two westerners avid for the lake’s celebrated trout.
They had discussed with Cager the problem of getting at Neuburg and his gang by stealth, and decided that they had best drift up to it alone under their fishermen disguise. To guard against any eventuality, a boatload of short, sturdy, and well-armed men followed them.
These men would wait behind a headland that cut off Gunning’s shack from the rest of the lake, and at a signal, or if, through glasses, they saw any signs of foul play, they would dash to the rescue.
Rowing up the lake, Clement could not repress a shudder at its ominousness. The great spruce-clad mountains came right down to the fillet of water, hemming it darkly. As they turned a shoulder, and the hotel and railway buildings, standing up sharply in this clear air a mile behind, were cut off from view, they seemed to be plunged at once into the heart of No Man’s Land. The dark lake was stark and empty and utterly beyond human touch and help, it seemed. What might not happen to Heloise in a place like this?